Peter Sellers - Biography - IMDb Peter Sellers Biography Showing all 77 items Jump to: Overview (4) | Mini Bio (1) | Spouse (4) | Trade Mark (5) | Trivia (48) | Personal Quotes (14) | Salary (1) Overview (4) 5' 8½" (1.74 m) Mini Bio (1) Often credited as the greatest comedian of all time, Peter Sellers was born to a well-off English acting family in 1925. His mother and father worked in an acting company run by his grandmother. As a child, Sellers was spoiled, as his parents' first child had died at birth. He enlisted in the Royal Air Force and served during World War II. After the war he met Spike Milligan , Harry Secombe and Michael Bentine , who would become his future workmates. After the war, he set up a review in London, which was a combination of music (he played the drums) and impressions.

Then, all of a sudden, he burst into prominence as the voices of numerous favorites on the BBC radio program "The Goon Show" (1951-1960), and then making his debut in films in Penny Points to Paradise (1951) and Down Among the Z Men (1952), before making it big as one of the criminals in The Ladykillers (1955). These small but showy roles continued throughout the 1950s, but he got his first big break playing the dogmatic union man, Fred Kite, in I'm All Right Jack (1959). The film's success led to starring vehicles into the 1960s that showed off his extreme comic ability to its fullest. In 1962, Sellers was cast in the role of Clare Quilty in the Stanley Kubrick version of the film Lolita (1962) in which his performance as a mentally unbalanced TV writer with multiple personalities landed him another part in Kubrick's Dr.

Strangelove (1964) in which he played three roles which showed off his comic talent in play-acting in three different accents; British, American, and German. The year 1964 represented a peak in his career with four films in release, all of them well-received by critics and the public alike: "Dr. Strangelove," for which he was Oscar nominated, "The Pink Panther," in which he played his signature role of the bumbling French Inspector Jacques Clouseau for the first time, its almost accidental sequel, "A Shot in the Dark," and "The World of Henry Orient." Sellers was on top of the world, but on the evening of April 5, 1964, he suffered a nearly fatal heart attack after taking amyl nitrites (also called 'poppers'; an early type of Viagara-halogen combination) while engaged in a sexual act with his second wife Britt Eckland. He has been working on Billy Wilder's "Kiss Me, Stupid" (1964). In a move Wilder later regretted, he replaced Sellers with Ray Walston rather than hold up production.

By October 1964, Sellers made a full recovery and was working again. The mid-1960s were noted for the popularity of all things British, from the Beatles music (who were presented with their Grammy for Best New Artist by Sellers) to the James Bond films, and the world turned to Sellers for comedy. "What's New Pussycat" (1965) was another big hit, but a combination of his ego and insecurity was making Sellers difficult to work with. When the James Bond spoof, "Casino Royale" (1967) ran over budget and was unable to recoup its costs despite an otherwise healthy box-office take, Sellers received some of the blame. He turned down an offer from United Artists for the title role in "Inspector Clouseau" (1968), but was angry when the production went ahead with Alan Arkin in his place. His difficult reputation and increasingly erratic behavior, combined with several less successful films, took a toll on his standing. By 1970, he had fallen out of favor.

He spent the early years of the new decade appearing in such lackluster B films as "Where Does It Hurt?" (1972) and turning up more frequently on television as a guest on "The Dean Martin Show" and a Glen Campbell TV special. Inspector Clouseau came to his rescue when Sir Lew Grade expressed an interest in a TV series based on the character. Clouseau's creator, writer-director Blake Edwards, whose career had also seen better days, convinced Grade to bankroll a feature instead, and "Return of the Pink Panther" (1975) was a major hit in the summer of "Jaws" and restored both men to prominence. Sellers would play Clouseau in two more successful sequels, "The Pink Panther Strikes Again" (1976) and "The Revenge of the Pink Panther" (1978), and Sellers would use his newly rediscovered clout to realize his dream of playing Chauncey Gardiner in a film adaptation of Jerzy Kosinski's novel "Being There." Sellers had read the novel in 1972, but it took seven years for the film to reach the screen.

"Being There" (1979) earned Sellers his second Oscar nomination, but he lost to Dustin Hoffman of "Kramer vs. Kramer" (1979). Sellers struggled with depression and mental insecurities throughout his life. An enigmatic figure, he often claimed to have no identity outside the roles that he played. His behavior on and off the set and stage became more erratic and compulsive, and he continued to frequently clash with his directors and co-stars, especially in the mid-1970s when his physical and mental health, together with his continuing alcohol and drug problems, were at their worst. He never fully recovered from his 1964 heart attack because he refused to take traditional heart medication and instead consulted with 'psychic healers'. As a result, his heart condition continued to slowly deteriorate over the next 16 years. On March 20, 1977, Sellers barely survived another major heart attack and had a pacemaker surgically implanted to regulate his heartbeat which caused him further mental and physical discomfort. However, he refused to slow down his work schedule or consider heart surgery which might have expanded his life by several years.

On July 25, 1980, Sellers was scheduled to have a reunion dinner in London with his Goon Show partners, Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe. However, at around 12 noon on July 22, Sellers collapsed from a massive heart attack in his Dorchester Hotel room and fell into a coma. He died in a London hospital just after midnight on July 24, 1980 at age 54. He was survived by his fourth wife, Lynne Frederick, and three children: Michael, Sarah and Victoria. At the time of his death, he was scheduled to undergo an angiography in Los Angeles on July 30 to see if if he was eligible for heart surgery. His last movie, The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu (1980), completed just a few months before his death, proved to be another box office flop.

Director Blake Edwards ' attempt at reviving the Pink Panther series after Sellers' death resulted in two panned 1980s comedies, the first of which, Trail of the Pink Panther (1982), deals with Inspector Clouseau's disappearance and was made from material cut from previous Pink Panther films and includes interviews with the original casts playing their original characters. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Ashley G. Mackinnon Spouse (4) His ability to change his voice and appearance Often infused his comic characters with an undercurrent of deep melancholy Often worked with Blake Edwards and Stanley Kubrick . Often ad-libbed some of the most memorable lines his characters say in his films Trivia (48) Father, with actress Britt Ekland , of actress Victoria Sellers . Ranked #84 in Empire (UK) magazine's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list. [October 1997] Born at 6:00am-BST Interred at Golders Green Crematorium, London, England, UK.

Sellers, Spike Milligan , Michael Bentine and Harry Secombe performed on BBC Radio as "The Goon Show" in the early 1950s. Claimed to have had a near-death experience during a heart attack in 1964, in which he saw Heaven and he met an angel who told him that it was not his time to die yet. He was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the 1966 Queen's Birthday Honours List for his services to drama. First actor to be nominated for a single Academy award (best actor) for a film in which he potrayed three different characters in the same film: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964). Sellers was the first male to appear on the cover of Playboy Magazine, in April 1964 Was a vegetarian. Father, with Anne Howe, of Michael Sellers and Sarah Sellers .

His third wife, Miranda Quarry, is now "The Countess of Stockton." Turned down the role of George Webber in Blake Edwards ' 10 (1979) ( George Segal was cast instead but eventually replaced by Dudley Moore ). Sellers made a cameo appearance but it wound up being cut out. His "Goon Show" records, and other comedy recordings from the 1950s and early 1960s, were produced by George Martin , before he worked with The Beatles . He was voted the 41st Greatest Movie Star of all time by Premiere Magazine. Died at 12:26am - BST after being in a coma for more than 30 hours after suffering a massive heart attack. Mel Brooks considered him for - and he expressed interest in - the role of "Leo Bloom" in The Producers (1967), but nothing ever came of it, and the role eventually went to Gene Wilder . However, Sellers was instrumental in the success of the film.

After its release, he happened, almost by accident, to see a private screening of it and was so impressed that the next day he took out two full-page newspaper ads at his own expense proclaiming that it was one of the greatest comedies he had ever seen. This exposure helped promote the film at a critical time when it appeared that it was destined to sink without a trace. Is portrayed by Geoffrey Rush in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004). At the time of his death, he was due to undergo an angiography in preparation for potential heart surgery in Los Angeles on July 30. One afternoon the doorbell rang in Sellers' London flat. As he was busy in his study, his wife Anne went to the door, where she was handed a telegram. The message: "Bring me a cup of coffee. Peter". Late one night, following a disappointing day wrestling with a troublesome scene in one of the Pink Panther films, director Blake Edwards was roused by a call from Sellers. "I just talked to God!" he exclaimed, "and he told me how to do it!" The next day Edwards humored Sellers - and the result was an unmitigated disaster.

"Peter," Edwards suggested, "next time you talk to God, tell him to stay out of show business!". Died a few days after filming a "Barclays Bank" commercial, which was never aired. His performance as Dr. Strangelove in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) is ranked #75 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time. His performance as Inspector Jacques Clouseau in the "Pink Panther" franchise is ranked #67 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time. His performance as Chance the Gardener in Being There (1979) is ranked #49 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time. At the time of his death, Sellers was set to play Inspector Clouseau again in "Romance of the Pink Panther". The script had been written by Sellers and Jim Moloney and the film was to be directed by Clive Donner . Pamela Stephenson was to have played the female lead.

Also in the pipeline were the leads in Lovesick (1983) and Unfaithfully Yours (1984). Both these roles were taken over by Dudley Moore . At the time of his death, he left the bulk of his estate - cash, cars, houses and art amounting to £4.5 million - to fourth wife Lynne Frederick . He left his son Michael and his daughter Sarah from his first marriage to actress Anne Howe only £800 each. "It was a calculated and considered act. Even his lawyers blushed when they told me," Michael said. Sellers had married Frederick, who was known primarily as David Frost 's girlfriend (and subsequently his wife after Sellers' death), in 1977. Reportedly Sellers was in the process of excluding her from his will in the time immediately preceding his death by heart attack in 1980. A drug addict and an alcoholic herself, Frederick died at age 39 and all income from Sellers' estate, including royalties from movie profit-sharing deals, was inherited by her daughter with third husband Barry Unger. Together with Nicolas Cage ( Adaptation.

(2002)) and Lee Marvin ( Cat Ballou (1965)), and José Ferrer ( Moulin Rouge (1952) Sellers is the only actor with an Oscar nomination for playing multiple characters in a film (in ( Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), he plays three characters, Group Captain (G/C) Lionel Mandrake, President Merkin Muffley and Dr. Strangelove). Marvin is the only one who actually won one for a double role. Became friends with the group The Beatles , and visited them at Abbey Road Studios. Was given a tape of rough mixes from the "White Album", which was auctioned (and bootlegged) after his death. He was one of the favorite actors of Elvis Presley who always had Sellers' Pink Panther films with him on the airplane while he was on tour. Prince Charles had been a fan of Sellers since "The Goon Show".

In 1975, after he had seen The Return of the Pink Panther (1975) in Montreal, he wrote to Sellers that he'd laughed so hard he had wet the dress of the woman in the next seat. Before his death he spoke very highly of Robin Williams and Steve Martin , both considered that a great honor. Was an amateur photographer and camera nut for most of his life. Served in the Royal Air Force during World War II. His father was Protestant and his mother was Jewish. He attended St. Aloysius College, a Roman Catholic School. He was fitted with a pacemaker in 1977 for his failing heart. Claimed in a 1980 interview with Rolling Stone that he had fathered a son by a girlfriend while serving in the Royal Air Force during World War II, and abandoned them. Shirley MacLaine said of him, "Past lives leaking through and confusing him in this life.". In addition to dubbing Alfonso Bedoya in The Black Rose (1950), he also dubs the Chinese actor Ley On .

He also provided the voice of an off-screen Winston Churchill in The Man Who Never Was (1956), and at least two other briefly-heard voices in that film. An oft-repeated rumor suggests that he also dubbed a few lines for Humphrey Bogart in Beat the Devil (1953), but this is harder to confirm. He was best known for his portrayal of the hapless, accident-prone Inspector Clouseau from the Pink Panther movies. A final film in the franchise was to be called "Romance of the Pink Panther", but Sellers died before it could be made. He is the primary influence on Sacha Baron Cohen . An English Heritage blue plaque can be found at his place of birth on the corner of Southsea Terrace and Castle Road in Southsea. What was the family home is above a Chinese restaurant. Married Britt Ekland after knowing her for only 10 days. Author Jackie Collins based the character "Charlie Brick" on Sellers in her book "Sinners". He worked with Peter O'Toole , Woody Allen , Ursula Andress and Burt Bacharach on both What's New Pussycat (1965) and Casino Royale (1967).

Sellers was widely considered by industry professionals (particularly Blake Edwards ) to be mentally ill with no real personality of his own. He habitually assumed the personalities of the characters he portrayed, morphing into another one in a following role. People that knew him intermittently over years were baffled by his transformations. As an actor, Sellers could be brilliant with a strong script, but he often accepted sub-par projects and inferior roles which would wreck havoc in his personal life. Lived in Gstaad, Switzerland during the last six years of his life. He was a great friend of the British actor Jon Pertwee , who was also known for many comedy parts. Personal Quotes (14) If you ask me to play myself, I will not know what to do. I do not know who or what I am. There used to be a me behind the mask, but I had it surgically removed. To see me as a person on screen would be one of the dullest experiences you could ever wish to experience. I'm a classic example of all humorists - only funny when I'm working. Women are more difficult to handle than men. It's their minds. I writhe when I see myself on the screen.

I'm such a dreadfully clumsy hulking image. I say to myself, "Why doesn't he get off? Why doesn't he get off?" I mean, I look like such an idiot. Some fat awkward thing dredged up from some third-rate drama company. I must stop thinking about it, otherwise I shan't be able to go on working. [on Blake Edwards ' smash hit 10 (1979)] I turned down the lead role many, many times. I just didn't feel I was right for the part. I'm a very ambitious person. I don't believe by any means that I've even begun to do what's inside me. I have a burning sort of fire inside me to do certain things which I know I'm going to do. I'm going to defeat all these berks that are around me and I'm going to do it. I mean, I have a name of being very difficult, I'm not difficult at all, I just cannot take mediocrity, I just cannot take it on any level. You only know what happiness is once you're married. But then it's too late.

[on Goldie Hawn ] In the fullest possible meaning of the word, she is so nice. [on Sophia Loren ] I was never in love with any woman as deeply as I was with Sophia. [April 1969, interview in "Nova" magazine] When I look at myself I see a person who strangely lacks what I consider the ingredients for a personality. [on developing a role for the screen] I walk around, trying different accents, feeling my way to the character. I stare at my own image in the mirror every morning, waiting for the other fellow - the man I'm going to play - to emerge and stare back at me. I am waiting for the stranger to come into my life. When it happens, I have this flush of happiness. Most actors want to play "Othello", but all I've really wanted to play is Chance the Gardener. I feel what the character, the story is all about is not merely the triumph of a simple man, an illiterate. It's God's message again that the meek shall inherit the earth.

Salary (1) THE LIFE OF A CLOWN - NYTimes.com THE LIFE OF A CLOWN By WAYNE LAWSON; Wayne Lawson is an editor of The New York Times Book Review. Published: April 4, 1982 PETER SELLERS The Authorized Biography. By Alexander Walker. Illustrated. 281 pp. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co. $13.95. P.S. I LOVE YOU An Intimate Portrait of Peter Sellers. By Michael Sellers. With Sarah and Victoria Sellers.Illustrated. 238 pp. New York: E. P. Dutton. $12.95. IN 1973 actor Peter Sellers told a journalist that he had ''only two real friends in the world,'' Evelyn de Rothschild and Lord Snowdon. The statement appears on page 205 of ''Peter Sellers: The Authorized Biography,'' and by then the reader, far from doubting the truth of it, may wonder if the list isn't padded. This book and another called ''P.S. I Love You'' depict the late comedian who created Inspector Clouseau as a mean, neurotic voluptuary.

He abused his wives, lacerated his children (Michael and Sarah by his first wife and Victoria by actress Britt Ekland), maddened directors and fellow actors, smashed furniture, dropped friends, used drugs and squandered millions. Yet neither of these books is intended to denigrate Sellers. His widow, age 27, authorized the first; his son, also 27, wrote the second; and both claim they understood him better and loved him more than anyone else. A paradox? Not really. The books differ radically in their versions of the last four years of the actor's life, and the reason for that is no mystery. A year before he died, Sellers added a codicil to his will, leaving only $2,000 to each of his children and the remainder of his estate (valued at between $2 million and 4 million, depending on which of these books you read, or believe) to actress Lynne Frederick, his wife of three and a half years. Miss Frederick saw no reason to alter the terms, and therein lie the contradictions.

Michael Sellers and his sister and half sister clearly feel that Miss Frederick manipulated their father; they say he was preparing to divorce her when he had his fatal heart attack; and they take their revenge on her in ''P.S. I Love You.'' In ''Peter Sellers: The Authorized Biography,'' author Alexander Walker and authorizer Lynne Frederick, who suppplies a preface, feel obliged to insist that Miss Frederick was the one true love of the star's life. Both biographies suffer from this special pleading, because the reader has no way of arriving at the truth of such matters and therefore feels put upon needlessly. Both biographers would have done well to stick to the verifiable facts of their subject's life, which are fascinating. The son of struggling vaudevillians, Sellers left school at 14. At 25 he became famous on British radio in ''The Goon Show.'' From then on his career was mostly movies - 54 of them, some, like ''Dr. Strange-Love,'' comic masterpieces; a few so bad (owing to his increasingly unmanageable temperament) that they were never released.

He had four wives (three half his age), as well as romances with scores of women, including Sophia Loren, and spent his successful years running with the international jet set. He acquired his own yacht and horses and eventually spent $250,000 a year chartering private planes. In 1964 he had his first heart attack; his life after that, according to his son, was ''precariously balanced by a daily intake of fifty or sixty pills and with the assistance of a pacemaker ... Dad clung frantically to the belief that he was a survivor and relied on the word of a clairvoyant that he would live until he was seventy-five.'' He died at 54. ''P.S. I LOVE YOU'' tells what his world was like for his children. Ringo Starr, a friend, bought their father's 16th-century manor in Surrey, and when Victoria lost a baby tooth, Tony Snowdon slipped a 5 note under her pillow. They met Liza Minnelli as a prospective stepmother, and Dad got them bit parts in his films.

These same privileged children, however, in the last years of their father's life, would receive cutting communications, often dictated: ''I should be very happy (if) I never hear from you again.'' ''I no longer wish to be thought of as your father.'' The tone gets strained whenever Michael Sellers mentions Lynne Frederick. ''Her almond-coloured eyes to me shone with undisguised ambition.'' He quotes his father, only days before his death, as saying: ''(Lynne) annoys me. I just wish the divorce was over and done with.'' One picture caption reads: ''The house at Gstaad, now occupied by Lynne Frederick and David Frost.'' (Miss Frederick married the television personality six months after Sellers died.) And so on. THE authorized biography has similar trouble in reverse. In her preface, Miss Frederick risks credibility when she says Sellers ''spent the first six months of our relationship telling me horrendous stories about his earlier life, the marriages, the girl friends, the children''; or when she quotes him telling her after finishing ''Being There,'' ''I've fulfilled my ambition.

Apart from you, I've no reason to go on living.'' Loaded dice become professional biographer Alexander Walker even less, as when he tells how Miss Frederick confiscated Sellers' storehouse of pills: ''It was all for his own good. Yet in the eyes of some uninformed people she was cast as Regina Giddens, out of 'The Little Foxes,' contributing to her husband's demise by withholding his heart drops!'' Such heavy-handedness detracts from the sort of informative cinema lore that film buffs devour and that Mr. Walker delivers in abundance, from Sellers' army escapades impersonating officers to his obsessive identification with Chance Gardiner, the hero of ''Being There.'' He hounded author Jerzy Kosinski for seven years to make the film, and based his portrayal on Stan Laurel, his favorite comedian. If Sellers was naturally witty, there is no sign of it in these books, except for the fact that he requested a record of Glenn Miller's ''In the Mood'' be played at his funeral. It was. Too bad he didn't leave instructions about his biography.

Funny peculiar, funny ha-ha - Telegraph Culture Funny peculiar, funny ha-ha Charles Spencer reviews Mr Strangelove by Ed Sikov and Tragically I Was an Only Twin by Peter Cook By Charles Spencer 12:00AM BST 13 Oct 2002 Here are two books concerning two of the funniest men of the second half of the last century. One volume repeatedly reduced me to helpless giggles. The other is about as amusing as clinical depression combined with a toothache. Let's get the misery over with first. When the great film director Billy Wilder heard that Peter Sellers had suffered a coronary he was incredulous. "Heart attack?" he remarked, "You have to have a heart before you can have an attack." After reading Ed Sikov's excellent, arctic biography, you can only conclude that Wilder was spot-on. Throughout his career, Sellers always insisted that he had no personality, that he was an empty vessel filled only by the characters he played. Indeed the idea of a man with no discernible character actually became the subject of one of his last films, Being There, in which he played a gardener whose banal utterances are repeatedly mistaken for profound wisdom.

But of course Sellers had a personality, and it is an all too familiar one. He was a spoilt-rotten mummy's boy. The mother in question, Peg, was a member of a vaudeville family which specialised in aquatic shows, in which Peg and her sister would appear in vestigial costumes in an onstage tank, suggestively eating bananas underwater. At the age of two Peter was forced on stage himself, in a miniature white tie, top hat and tails outfit, to sing the sentimental ditty, My Old Dutch. He hated it and in an early example of the petulant tantrums that were so prominent a feature of the rest of his life, he stamped on the hat. Related Articles Sinclair McKay reviews Tragically I was an Only Twin: the Complete Peter Cook and Classic Adventures According to Spike Milligan 13 Oct 2002 Peg gave Peter everything he wanted, and smothered him emotionally. If he wanted something, he had to have it, and he had to have it now. This applied not just to cameras, cars, and other assorted gadgets, but to women too, whom he treated like unwanted toys as soon as he tired of them.

When things were going Sellers's way, he could be charming. When things weren't, he was absolutely vile. On one occasion his son Michael tried to repair a scratch on one of daddy's beloved cars with a tin of red paint. Sellers savagely took his belt to him and Spike Milligan says he feared for the boy's life. At least two of his four wives, including his first, Anne Hayes, and Britt Ekland (in her pre-Rod Stewart days), suffered physical as well as verbal abuse. He often became insanely jealous, smashing up everything in sight. On at least one occasion he threatened to kill Anne, but satisfied himself with beating her up instead. Michael Sellers remembers him as a "crazed, manic figure" who once dragged him out of bed at three in the morning and asked "Do you think I should divorce your mummy?" Ekland, who described her marriage to Sellers as an "atrocious sham", remembers having her Cartier watch ripped from her wrist, stamped on and flushed down the lavatory. On another occasion she was so miserable that she swallowed a fistful of sleeping pills. "I wanted to find oblivion", she said.

Wife number three, Miranda Quarry, was a speedily discarded high-society girl, while the fourth, Lynne Frederick, seems to have been even more unpleasant than her husband. She collared his fortune, despite being separated from him at the time of his death, married David Frost six months later, and despite the pleading of Spike Milligan, refused to share any of the cash with Sellers's wretched children. Reading such luridly unpleasant stuff, it's easy to forget that at his best Sellers was a brilliant comic actor, never better than when he was at his most restrained and subtle - though fans of the Goons clearly preferred him in over-the-top mode. He also suggested a humanity on celluloid that rarely found its way into his private life. Nevertheless I find myself wondering just how much of his work will endure. When I watched one of the Pink Panther films - which I once adored - again recently, Sellers's performance as Clouseau struck me as as grotesquely self-indulgent and lamentably unfunny. Just like Sellers himself, in fact, during one of his frequent black moods.

In contrast Tragically I Was an Only Twin (Century, £17.99, 429 pp) offers sheer delight. William Cook (no relation) has gathered together a generous selection of Peter Cook's work, from undergraduate sketches to the late-night calls he made towards the end of his life to a local radio phone-in show, when he masqueraded as a lovelorn, fish-obsessed Norwegian called Sven. In a sympathetic and illuminating introduction, the author quotes Stephen Fry's observation that "Cook had funniness in the same way that beautiful people have beauty." Fry was right. It was the juxtaposition of grinding mundanity and inspired flights of surrealism that made Cook so irresistibly entertaining, and his talent seems to have arrived, fully formed, while he was still a schoolboy at Radley. His later years could be viewed as a sad, boozy decline, but unlike Sellers, Cook never whined, and there were flashes of spontaneous brilliance right to the end. Both in Beyond the Fringe and the TV show Not Only But Also - much of which the BBC has scandalously wiped - Peter Cook created timeless comedy that is almost as funny on the printed page as it was when Cook delivered it himself.

Charles Spencer is theatre critic of 'The Daily Telegraph'. Dynamite in bed - and ruthless out of it. Lynne, the gold-digger who tricked Peter Sellers' family out of his millions | Daily Mail Online Dynamite in bed - and ruthless out of it. Lynne, the gold-digger who tricked Peter Sellers' family out of his millions comments His unique comic ability enthralled millions around the world, but Peter Sellers's volatile and perplexing character left a trail of misery in his private life. 'He causes pain to everyone who gets close to him,' Spike Milligan warned me after I had been asked by Sellers to write his official autobiography in 1966. 'There is no other actor like him, but he's a bloody monster. Don't get involved. He will let you down. He will screw you and - you know what? - he won't even notice.' Spectacular generosity: Peter Sellers with his fourth wife, young actress Lynne Frederick, who inherited his £4.5million fortune Those words came back to me this week on hearing the revelations about the emotional and financial turmoil created by Sellers's capricious, multi-million pound will.

When he died suddenly of a heart attack in July 1980 at the age of 54, Sellers left almost all of his £4.5 million fortune to his widow, the young actress Lynne Frederick, even though they had been married for only three years. In contrast to this spectacular generosity, his three children from two earlier marriages received just £750 each. Effectively, they were disinherited by their own father. RELATED ARTICLES Share this article Share What made Sellers's will more extraordinary was, at the time of his death, he was planning to divorce Frederick and change his will. 'I am impossible to live with,' he told a friend in a moment of candour. 'I've had three marriages end in disaster. Lynne knew the score when she married me. It was always just a matter of time before she became the fourth ex-Mrs Peter Sellers.' Yet in the years that followed Sellers's death, and her fortunate inheritance, Lynne Frederick fiercely denied the rumours that their marriage had been over for at least a year when her husband died. Revelling in her millionaire status, she refused to make any provision for her late husband's children, despite the pleas of Sellers's friends, including a furious Spike Milligan.

Yet a document that has just surfaced reveals Sellers and his wife signed a divorce settlement in 1979 which gave Lynne a lump sum of £327,000 and their house in Los Angeles. Friend: Spike Milligan pleaded with Lynne Frederick to make some provision for her late husband's children But because Sellers died before their divorce was finalised, they were still legally married and Lynne, in the words of Spike Milligan, 'copped the lot'. Remarkably, Sellers's children look back on the shabby episode with regret rather than rancour. 'It wasn't Dad's fault - we just got caught between his passions,' his son, Michael, told me shortly before he died of heart failure at the age of 52 in 2006. 'Maybe another week, the old man would have sorted it all out and he would have remembered his kids in a new will. 'Instead, we are left with £750 each. We know that he let people down all the time - deliberately, accidentally, purposely, for no reason at all. That was Dad.

'I try to be philosophical about it now, but it still hurts, not because of the money Lynne Frederick walked away with that should have been shared with the kids - she never offered us a penny, she was unbelievably tight-fisted - but because Dad was letting us down again.' The marriage to Lynne demonstrated the impulsive perversity of Sellers's character. After his divorce from his third wife, the aristocratic Miranda Quarry, in 1974, he vowed he would never marry again. But early in 1977, at a party hosted by his agent, he met Lynne Frederick, a 22-year-old aspiring actress. Immediately, he embarked on a combustible affair. 'She's dynamite in bed,' he said, explaining her attraction. Within three weeks of meeting, they were married in Paris, though this was not a record for the impetuous Sellers. In 1964, he married the blonde Scandinavian actress Britt Ekland only 11 days after they met. Lynne's family and Sellers's friends were sure the marriage was doomed, like the rest.

'What mother can be expected to approve of the marriage of her daughter to such a man?' said Iris Frederick, a television casting director. 'Lynne Frederick is a little gold digger. Just trying to keep up with her will kill the silly bugger,' warned Spike Milligan, who believed Lynne was also encouraging Sellers's drinking and growing cocaine habit. Caught between his passions: Anne Sellers, who divorced the actor in 1963 with children Sarah and Michael A compulsive personality and an eccentric hypochondriac - he always had a cold or felt a sore throat coming - Sellers once also got hooked on patent medicines. Visitors to foreign film locations, anxious to put him in a good mood, were advised to bring him small gifts of his favourite remedies. Gift-wrapped packages of Benylin, Lemsip, Night Nurse, Day Nurse and Liquid Anbesol - he often suspected he had a mouth ulcer on its way - were always acceptable. Most of the time he was dosed up to the eyeballs with some syrup or salve. If the instructions said 'take three times a day', he'd take it three times an hour. But if Frederick encouraged his drug habit, she paid a terrible price for her manipulative greed.

She became a chronic alcoholic and drug addict herself, and quickly ran through much of her inheritance before dying prematurely in 1994 from her health problems. Sellers was undoubtedly a psychologically flawed and unbalanced individual. As with many comics, his epic contradictions made him a brilliant performer, but they also made him an awkward friend or colleague. Token amount: Victoria Sellers, daughter of Britt Ekland, was left £750 by her famous father I was on the receiving end of his instability when we collaborated on his official biography in the Sixties. Despite Spike Milligan's dire warnings, I decided to press ahead with the project - which Sellers promised would be 'a great adventure into the unknown' - partly because we had a lucrative deal with an American publisher, partly because I was keen to hear the inside life story of one of the biggest figures of modern entertainment. In 1966, Sellers was at the height of his international fame - and married to Britt Ekland. He had made a string of smash hit movies, including the Pink Panther series, Dr Strangelove and What's New Pussycat?

He claimed to have had affairs with Princess Margaret and Sophia Loren, with whom, in his immortal words, he enjoyed bouts of 'making mooey-wooey'. The two women, he told me, 'have the same size breasts, the same cup-size exactly'. I had no qualms about giving up a well-paid, high-profile job on a national newspaper to embark on the research for this titanic book. During the spring and summer of that year, we worked happily together on what Sellers had begun to call 'The Life'. He was astonishingly frank with me. He told me, for example, that his marriage to Britt Ekland was not merely in trouble but was already over in his mind. Within a few weeks of their marriage, he had got it into his head that Britt had slept with Darryl F. Zanuck, the Hollywood mogul who had a habit of interviewing young actresses in hotel suites while wearing little more than a silk kimono and a fat cigar. 'Britt's got a contract with Zanuck. What does that tell you?' he had asked me. 'That she's a talented actress?' I suggested. 'Wrong!' he corrected me angrily.

'Now we're playing injury time, luv,' he said, employing the Cockney vernacular he used in intimate conversations. Discussing his massive heart attack in Hollywood in 1964, when he had been clinically dead for two-and-a-half minutes, he said it was a vision of his mother, Peg - he always called her Peg - beckoning him from beyond the grave, that brought him back to life. The bedroom athleticism of the young Ms Ekland, he said, had been largely responsible for his heart attack. Sellers with second wife Britt Ekland at the premiere of Maggie May in 1964 'When a 38-year-old bloke marries a 21-year-old bird, he needs all the help he can get. 'We used poppers (amyl nitrate), you know, to tweak the thrill a bit. Bubbly, poppers and Britt. It was all too much. Before I knew it, I was dead as a bloody kipper.' His stories were compelling and I did not see the catastrophe that was around the corner. In September 1966, I received a letter from him in which he stated that he no longer wished to continue with the book.

One of his many traits was to adopt the persona of a stage character to avoid open conflict. In this case, he appropriated the stiff and unnatural language of the notorious trade union official Fred Kite, whom he so brilliantly portrayed in the classic 1959 movie I'm All Right Jack. He told me that he had ' withdrawn, mediated, consulted, convened and my decision has been democratically arrived at'. Having given up my job and with a major deal now in jeopardy, I immediately flew to Rome, where he and Britt were filming the British comedy The Bobo. I arrived unannounced at his villa on the Appian Way. It was 10pm. He was just sitting down to dinner with Britt in a vaulted, candle-lit dining room: he at one end of a refectory table long enough to land a small aircraft on, Britt at the other, like unhappy lovers in a Gothic romance. A place was set for me halfway down the table. Inexplicably, Sellers spoke with a Spanish accent, using a Castilian 'th' for the 's' sound, as in 'parth the thalt, pleath'.

Frederick refused to make any provision for her late husband's children, despite the pleas of Sellers's friends, including a furious Spike Milligan. I could only imagine that he was trying out a voice for the inept bullfighter he was playing in the film. But given Sellers's sensitivity and the unusual atmosphere that permeated the evening, I felt it wiser to ignore what might have been a newly acquired, genuine speech impediment. There was always something madly ludicrous about the many dramas in his life: a Sellers crisis without a funny side was rare. 'Even when you're the victim of his outrageous behaviour, his selfishness, or one of his tantrums, you always found yourself smiling about it afterwards, even if you had to do it through gritted tears,' Milligan once told me. Sellers and I talked through the night and when I left Rome, The Life was on again - only he wanted to drop the acknowledgment of his involvement. 'I'm sorry I put you through that bithineth, Pete,' he lisped when we said goodbye. 'It wathn't my idea.

It wath Dan Leno'th.' Dan Leno was a 19th-century English pantomime dame who died in 1904. Sellers was convinced he was being guided by Leno, to whom he had been introduced in the Fifties by a North American Indian spirit guide called Red Cloud. The tragedy was that his sudden death in 1980, when he was in the process of cutting Lynne Frederick out of his will and out of his life, deprived his children of their rightful inheritance and proof of the love I'm sure he felt for them. That Sellers was a mess is an understatement. The conflict that he felt between the visitations of Dan Leno and those of his departed mother Peg drove him mad in the end. When my book was finally published in 1968, Sellers claimed not to have read it, but he said that he had been in touch with Peg and she liked it a lot, so much so that she scolded him for listening to Leno. Sellers even offered to arrange a séance so Peg could thank me herself! That was so typical of him, for there was always darkness on the other side of his comedy.

At his funeral, he instructed that the Glenn Miller tune In The Mood should be played. Tellingly, it was a song that he hated.

Question: David Frost was once married to which of Peter Sellers four wives?
Answer: LYNN FREDERICK